Day 11: Making the Most of Mistakes

Today Rob and I headed out to the club after work. We took along the bumper boy and decided to give everyone a good swim. I started Fred out with a medium distance true blind. It has been a week or so since I tried this; so I thought I'd give it a go. After taking a decent amount of time to line him up; my little guy went plunging in and swam a straight line there and back! Grant it, it was a white bumper; so once he was headed out he could see it, but I see it as a step (or swim) in the right direction. The video is below; but my hat cam was a tick off, so you miss some of the action.

A good dog trainer might have stopped at this point...but since I don't claim to be good, or a dog trainer; we decided to forge on. I had Rob load up the bumper boy and we planned on a long single mark with a diversion bird on the way back. With the new electronics being a bit more sensitive than the old ones; both bumpers ended up going off right in succession of one another and landing only a few feet apart in the water. Ugh. I sent Fred and he got the first one perfectly. When I got ready to send him for the second one I realized that he had no recollection of the fact that there were two out there to begin with. Luckily, I have been training for just this situation for the past 11 days; so I lined him up and sent him back. Much to my amazement, he took the line and swam about 45 yards out before I had to handle him back to the bumper.

With just this one handle, he nailed it and came swimming back. I even had Rob throw the diversion bird on the way back and he handled it like a champ! I have this whole ordeal on video but needless to say its a long one so I'll keep that one in my own archives for when I'm getting down on my training skills.

Now that the weather is getting warmer and the days are getting longer, we should be out to some of our other favorite spots soon!